Nick Ferrari

Writer and LBC radio presenter

Don't trust Ed Balls again!

PERHAPS it is because just about everyone thinks he is destined for the chop. After all, it must be tough to be told continually that your boss is greasing the steps for your rapid decline. Perhaps it is because his wife is clearly a hundred times brighter and a million times easier on the eye.

Maybe the Christmas pud and mince pies have meant his waistline has expanded in direct contrast to his seeming competence. Or his piano lessons are not going that well and he is hitting wrong notes just about everywhere.

Whatever it is, Ed Balls has managed to combine some of the most unlikable personality traits imaginable, displaying the arrogance of an uncaring bully and the morals of a scheming dictator.

It started with a speech last weekend to a Left-wing pressure group. Think student political debating society at its most dull and you are about there. Without reportedly any consultation with his party leader Ed Moribund, sorry, Miliband, Balls decided to make Labour's biggest economic announcement in more than a year.

In boldly proclaiming that, if elected, Labour would increase the rate of income tax from 45p in the pound to 50p for anyone earning more than £150,000, Balls undid all the effort the party and its Machiavellian spin doctors had put in over the decades in successfully rebranding the party as being supportive of the aspirational middle class and British business.

It is worth remembering that during nearly all of the 13 years that the Labour government of which Balls by name and by nature was a part, the top rate of income tax was fixed at 40p. It was under Gordon Brown, who was to economics what Boris Johnson is to hairdressing, that it was upped disastrously to 50p. The coalition has cut it back to 45p and guess what? It has brought in more cash.

And when or where has it ever been shown that taxing hardworking, aspirational middle classes helps the poor? Economists actually have an accepted theory for it, known as the Laffer Curve. A recognisable cut in taxes brings in more revenue and the proof of that is the top one per cent of income taxpayers now stump up 30 per cent of the tax take.

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Conservative and Lib Dem condemnation was as predictable as an England cricket debacle

Can someone either get Balls some new coloured beads for his abacus or help him remove his socks so he can count with his toes as well? He is clearly nowhere near ready with his reckoner at the moment. While never short of confidence and undoubtedly one of Labour's biggest and heaviest-hitting beasts, even Balls must have been chastened by the criticism that rained down on him.

Conservative and Lib Dem condemnation was as predictable as an England cricket debacle but when some of his own formed an orderly queue you had to know this time Balls would feel deflated.

A former Labour City minister said: "The economic logic behind his thinking would not get him a pass at GCSE." Labour donor and assistant treasurer Lord Noon said: "There are other means to augment the Treasury, not by penalising the business community." Another Labour donor, Sir Maurice Hatter, derided it as "bull".

Business leaders were equally scathing. These are the real wealth creators, the risk-takers and the brilliant entrepreneurs who put their livelihoods, reputations, fortunes (and usually houses) on the line to back their business brains and daring gambles.

People such as Sir Stuart Rose who transformed the fortunes of Marks & Spencer and has been missed since the moment he checked out from the store. He said: "This will put at risk all the good work that has been done to put the economy back on track."

Brilliant businessman Richard Caring, who creates thousands of jobs with his empire of firms in clothing, property and some of the nation's best-loved restaurants, spelled it out even more bluntly: "This is a complete discouragement for entrepreneurs."

Most frighteningly of all, Balls's assertion that this could bring in £15 billion over five years has no truth at all. The best estimate you can get is about £1.5 billion each year and that is not allowing for the drop off demonstrated earlier by the Laffer curve.

Add to this the facts that Balls said he had wished he had spent more while in power and the damning revelation from the nation's most respected economic think tank, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, that he has used "sleight of hand" to borrow an extra £25 million to fund insane spending plans and the unspeakable damage Labour could do to this country's nascent recovery becomes plain.

Chancellor George Osborne derided his opposite last week as "crystal balls". Surely, the word "utter" is far more appropriate.